Gods War

I immensely enjoyed this super-gritty, kinda gruesome SF novel by Kameron Hurley. Comes with a big caveat, you need to be able to dig her distinctive style of providing zero exposition, throwing complicated worldbuilding elements at you, and tying them all together to a fascinating read.

Our protagonist is Nyxnissa, a bounty hunter who drinks, fucks, kills, takes drugs, all the bad stuff. She used to be a bel dame in Nasheen, an elusive female faction who bring in boys who run away from the war front. Nasheen is matriarchal, and a long holy war is fought against the neighboring country of Chenja. The religion is islam-based, basically the colonists brought islamism with them, but interpret it very differently on both sides of the fence.

Nyx receives a bounty note to bring in an alien visitor to this world, but a rival bounty hunter plus the bel dames are also hunting her, and Nyx and her team. There's also magic based on insects, and seriously, it's too complex to explain more. But it's fascinating, and really gruesome. The characters are all deeply flawed, and it's hard to like any of the bunch, but they kinda really grew on me, particularly Nyx and her strange relationship with Rhys.

It's also queer af, and plays with gender reversal that's sometimes a bit shocking. Hurley doesn't go into detail, but the trials and tribulations of Rhys in particular as a male foreigner in Nasheen were almost a bit shocking.

I really really enjoyed it. It's not for everyone, for sure, though.